In the time he’d been in this country, he’d learned that American highways weren’t anything like Germany’s auto-bahns—there were speed limits, and there were many police out there enforcing them. So he did not anticipate any high-speed chases, just a discreet tailing job, made easier because he knew the nurse’s destination. Garrison Cap, West Virginia, the girl at Steve’s had said. Then all he would have to do was pick his time, place, and the correct weapon. Without her watchers, she would be easy prey.
6
CONNIE WALL THANKED THE POLICE OFFICER WHO’D DRIVEN her down to Steve’s. She told him it might take a few minutes to retrieve her car, especially if they’d run into any parts problems. He told her he literally had all day. She smiled at him, closed the door, and went inside.
“Hey, Dorie,” she said to the girl behind the desk. “Got Baby ready?”
“You bet, Connie. Steve took her out for a test drive an hour ago, before there was any traffic. He said she’s balanced up and ready to rumble.”
Connie paid the bill, got the keys, and then asked if she could talk to Steve for a minute. Dorie eyed the cop car parked out front, grinned, and went to find Steve. No secrets here, she thought, and then remembered she’d been the one running her mouth yesterday. Oh well. The night had been uneventful, except that the inside cops had used up all her coffee. Guys must be total addicts, she thought. She’d walked down to the Riggs Bank branch on Connecticut Avenue late yesterday afternoon to draw out a thousand in cash. One of the cops, who was not overweight but was a heavy smoker, had gone with her, visibly not thrilled with the prospect of walking twenty blocks up and back in the January air. With the cop puffing alongside, she’d felt pretty secure, even with all that cash on board. But her gear was already packed in the trunk of the Shelby, and all she had to do now was get the car on the street and out of sight of her shadows out there, both good and bad.
“Steve’s elbow-deep in a Nova tranny,” Dorie announced from the door leading into the shop. “He said to come on through.”
Dorie took her over to one of the work bays, where Steve and one of the mechanics were indeed elbow-deep in the bowels of a Chevy Nova. It was cold in the shop, and Steve’s breath was condensing on his work. A portable heater was radiating noisily but not very effectively at the two of them.
“She’s ready to go, Ms. Wall,” he told Connie. “And Dorie here says you maybe want to ease out the back, get yourself over to the Virginia side?”
“Sure would,” she said. The Shelby was already positioned at the back of the open bay, sitting in front of an industrial garage door. Bless their hearts, they’d washed it.
“That there’s gonna let you out onto Thirty-third Street. Take a left, go downtown to Reservoir Road, and then out to Chain Bridge. This time of day, you’ll be on the GW in ten minutes, max.”
“You think he might hear me, even from in here?” she asked.
“Mike’ll rev up the engine on that Vette over there. We’ve got the mufflers out. Dorie will watch to see that he’s not coming in or anything.”
“That guy’s here for my protection,” she said. “He might get pissed.”
“But not at us,” Steve pointed out. “You told us there’d be less traffic on Thirty-third Street. So’s you could get over to the Whitehurst Freeway, go downtown to New York Avenue, and out to Fifty and the Beltway. For your trip to Annapolis?”
She smiled. “I appreciate that, but you guys don’t need to get into trouble. They haven’t told me to stay in town or anything. I just need some space. Too much weird stuff going down over the past few days.”
Steve grinned, his mouth a white half-moon against all the grime on his face. Nobody in a muscle-car shop loved the police. “Happy trails,” he said. “Dorie honey, go make sure that cop’s still out there in his ride.”
Connie thanked him again and headed for the Shelby. The garage door began clanking upward at about the same time as one of the other mechanics revved the Corvette’s unmuffled engine. The racket was terrific, but it effectively masked the deep rumble of the Shelby’s heavy eight coming to life. She drove straight out the door, looked both ways to make sure there wasn’t a second cop car lurking out back, turned left into Thirty-third Street, and drove as quietly as she could toward Reservoir Road, M Street, and Chain Bridge. M Street in Georgetown was its usual snarled mess, but she was making all right turns, so it was simply a matter of plugging through it. She didn’t even notice the Suburban running three cars behind her until she was already over on the Virginia side on the George Washington Parkway, headed upriver toward the Capital Beltway. But when she did see it, she noticed it had red and white lights on its roof, not blue, and so she dismissed it. Red and white was the fire department, not the cops. No biggie.
The posted speed limit on the parkway was fifty, but she was being passed by everybody, so she notched it up just to sixty-five to join the flow. Once she hit the Beltway, she would take the Dulles toll roads all the way out to Leesburg, where she could pick up westbound Route 7. That would avoid the crush of Saturday-morning traffic around Tyson’s Corner. Besides, there was a gun shop she needed to visit out there along Route 7, right where it crossed the Blue Ridge. She’d lost the derringer in the house fight, and the cops had relieved her of Cat Ballard’s .45. Nobody with half a brain went into the hills of West Virginia without a gun.
Heismann backed the Suburban carefully up the roadside fire lane until he had a clear view of Route 7 where it descended the western flank of the Blue Ridge and snaked down toward the Shenandoah River. The woman had turned into a driveway about a mile back. There’d been a sign advertising gun repairs. Heismann had driven right on past, in case she was checking for a tail, but there was nothing but a cloud of dust hovering above the dirt road leading north into some hardwoods beyond the sign. Assuming she would continue west, he’d taken a right onto a county fire lane and then stopped to wait.
He’d had no trouble keeping up, even as he stayed a mile or so behind her. The road west had been rising steadily as it left Leesburg and approached the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, and even with periods when he couldn’t see her, he knew they hadn’t yet reached the state of West Virginia. That idiot girl at that garage had said Garrison Cap in West Virginia. A search of the index on his West Virginia map had produced a Garrison Gap, not Cap. Based on the map, he estimated that they had another half hour or so to go to the state line between Virginia and West Virginia, depending on which way she went once reaching the Shenandoah Valley. Fortunately, the American maps were excellent, and he could stay well behind her, even lose her, as long as she went to that town. Then he would simply search parking lots for that unusual car.
His plan was to track her to Garrison Gap and then finish this annoying business. And he must finish it soon, because he had more pressing priorities looming on the horizon: reinforcing the second-story floor to receive the marble deliveries, refining and practicing the escape routes, verifying the geographical coordinates, practicing the changes to his appearance, and dealing with the neighbor. Assuming he could squash this woman tonight, he could be back in the city by Sunday afternoon. That would give him four days to complete his preparations.
A large hawk slid by the Suburban’s side windows, slanting down a thermal as it disappeared into a meadow below his line of sight. He could see the occasional roofline among the trees ascending the slope, evidence that others had figured out what a stupendous view was to be had up here. Across the highway was Mount Weather, according to the map. This was where the supposedly secret government bunkers for nuclear war were located. Well, war was coming, but it wasn’t going to be nuclear. And it was not going to drop out of the earth’s atmosphere at nine times the speed of sound. No. This war would come into the city in one of those boxy brown trucks one saw everywhere, followed by some very special delivery.
A flash of red down on the highway brought him back to the task at hand. He put the Suburban in gear and started down the firebreak road as her car dis
appeared down the mountain. So now she probably had a gun. So what?
What Connie had sitting on the seat beside her was a World War II flare pistol. Made of steel, with rubber grips, it was a twelve-gauge gun. It broke down just like a shotgun did, allowing one flare round at a time. It was large and bulky but had only an eight-inch barrel. “Hold it out beyond your knees,” the gunsmith had warned her. “Bend your elbows a little to absorb the kick, grip it tight, and pull the trigger hard. Nothing sophisticated about this gun. No careful squeezing of the trigger, establishing a sight line, none of that, because this was never meant as a weapon in the first place.” He’d given her a box of handmade cut-down shells with game load, since the old flare gun’s chamber could not accept a standard shotgun shell of 2.75 inches or longer. “You’ll get one shot,” the guy had said, “and you’ll want maximum coverage. The locals use these things as snake guns. Point it in the general direction of the rattle and fire. You’ll carve out a red wedge of dirt about six feet long, assuming you don’t shoot your own feet off. Dispersion is immediate. There’s no safety, and the noise is truly impressive, especially from the front. Aim at the dirt and never at a rock. And if it’s a bad guy, aim at his teeth.”
She’d had no permit for her derringer at the time of the incident, so unless Jake Cullen worked something out, she didn’t expect to get it back. If they tried to hassle her about it, she’d tell them who had gotten it for her, which should stifle any further movement down that line of inquiry. But this thing was just what she wanted. She only wished that they made double-barrel ones, but the gunsmith was right—pop a cap in this beauty and entire windows would blow out. The gunsmith had also sold her a box of signal flares in case she got caught with it. It wouldn’t fool any of the county law, but it might serve as an excuse in the city. “Tell ’em it’s for your boat,” he’d told her.
Either way, she felt better having it on the seat beside her. Not that she expected trouble up here in the hills. She’d checked her rearview mirror several times once she cleared out of the traffic of Washington, but no one seemed to be following her. She let the Shelby out a little as she rolled down the big hill where Route 7 lined up to cross the Shenandoah River. She hit ninety before she reined it back in, remembering that the state cops liked to set up shop right at the base of the bridge to catch city people coasting down the mountain at high speed. She pushed the big flare gun down into the crack between the front seats, dropped a jacket over it, and crossed the river. Sure enough, there was a state trooper’s cruiser parked nose-out on the access ramp on this side of the river. She waved as she went by, and the cop actually waved back. From there, it was not quite an hour up to Garrison Gap and the lodge. She already felt better.
At noon, Swamp was helping Ben Hardee replace a cracked window in the front parlor of the Jackson Inn, when Lila appeared with the portable phone. “Busy day,” she said, handing Swamp the phone.
“Morgan,” Swamp said, clearing his throat.
“Jake Cullen. We have developments.”
“Developments. Oh, goodie.” Ben, sensing business, put down his tools and left to give Swamp some privacy.
“First, Ms. Wall ditched our cops this morning at a classic-car shop and has blown town. Any ideas?”
“She in the Shelby?”
“Yeah, so I think we can find her. The shop people said Annapolis.”
“I’d bet the other way—out here in West Virginia maybe.”
“There’s more,” Cullen said. “The shop people said there was this foreign—possibly German—dude in the shop the day before, asking about the Shelby.”
“Really. And?”
“Big-haired missy there says she just might have mentioned that the Shelby was going to be retrieved at nine this morning. Now tell me something: You sure your guys aren’t tailing our nurse friend even as we speak?”
“Come again? No. What gives?”
“We sent out a BOLO to the Virginia and Maryland State cops. Got a hit an hour ago, from a radar trap set up where Route Seven crosses the Shenandoah River. Red Shelby GT crossed the bridge at eleven-oh-five, westbound. Single occupant, white female. Who waved at the trooper, by the way.”
“Sounds like Wall. He wave back?”
“Didn’t say. But here’s the interesting bit. Two minutes behind her comes this black Suburban with an emergency light rack, tinted windows, DC plates, a coupla whip antennas. State guys are asking why we have a do-not-apprehend BOLO on a vehicle that the feds are already tailing.”
“Not this fed,” Swamp said, wondering what might be going on. “You want me to make some calls, see what I can find out?”
“I’d appreciate it. I know it’s Saturday and all, but we’ve got a dead cop. Guys are all still here, leaning forward. Some of ’em aren’t on safe.”
“I’ll give it a shot, Jake. I’ll get back to you.”
“You think it could be Secret Service? You know, black Suburban, tinted windows, whips, lights. That sounds like Secret Service wheels.”
“Hell, I guess it could be, but they’re the ones who turned me off. I even have a memo from the PRU director. Message: It’s a firefly. Drop it and then go back to your sand-box.”
“Okay. It’s just—”
“Yeah, I know. Right hand, left hand. Wouldn’t be the first time. Let me pull some strings.”
“Appreciate it, Special Agent.”
“Swamp. Call me Swamp. I’m definitely not special anymore.”
Swamp took the portable phone back to the kitchen area, where he replaced it on the base station.
“Such a gloomy face,” Lila said. “It’s the weekend. Time for some fun in the sun. Wild and wonderful West Virginia and all that.”
“Washington’s calling,” he muttered, looking in the refrigerator.
“Tell them to go away. Or better yet, let me talk to them. I’ll tell them a thing or two.”
“That’s what worries me,” he said. There was nothing that looked like lunch.
“Then just go outside. It’s a beautiful day.”
“Where?” he said, pointing with his chin to the window. The sun had been out before, but now sodden gray clouds were blowing in from the west and beginning to obscure the end of South Mountain over on the Maryland side. It looked like snow to him.
“Here now, you quit pawing through the commissary,” she said as Ben joined them in the kitchen. “That food is all for dinner patrons tonight. I’ll make you a fried-egg sandwich if you’re hungry. You go on. I’ll bring it upstairs.”
Swamp shut the refrigerator door and headed for the stairs. Lila’s brother, Ben, was about six inches shorter and ten years older than his sister, with graying hair, a mustache, and an expression of eternal patience on his face. He had tried his hand at running two restaurants and a motel in his time, but had never been able to earn enough money to make both a living and the mortgage payments, much less take on a wife. The Jackson Inn situation was perfect for him. All he had to do was be the innkeeper, at which he was entirely satisfactory. Lila acted as hostess, chef for the two nights they offered dinner, and provided the necessary female ambience to make the inn more than just another hotel/motel. They lived together in their parents’ house next door. It might have seemed strange to outsiders, but in Harpers Ferry, people either escaped at an early age or never left at all.
He climbed the stairs back up to his rooms, passing some tourists in the lobby who were looking through the inn’s brochure. He wondered if he shouldn’t go back to town, but then he reminded himself that it was the weekend. Anyone he might contact would be home for the weekend. With their families. Which was why they still had families, because they managed to let go of business for two days out of every seven on a regular basis, unlike him.
Still. What Jake had described sure as hell did sound like a Secret Service vehicle. He had his duty-officer roster in the briefcase upstairs. Then he wondered if he ought not call Lucy VanMetre to make sure that Hallory hadn’t put something in motion after all.
Connie parked the Shelby on the road side of the Garrison Lodge’s circular check-in lane and got out. The air up here was frosty, courtesy of a foot of snow that blanketed the lodge grounds and surrounding landscape. The twin lumps of Barrows Mountain and Cobb’s Hump were also snow-covered, with only the vertical rock faces that created the actual Gap clear of snow and ice. The sky was overcast, with a low scud drifting uncertainly through the nearby mountains. To the north and west, a darkening sky over the distant Alleghenies promised more snow. She was glad she’d brought her cold-weather gear, but she hurried into the lobby nonetheless.
The rooms here were clean and well appointed, just as she remembered them. She had stayed at many of the state’s resort spots in her years of coming up here, and this one was one of the best. She took a shower, put on her swimsuit, piled into the oversized terry-cloth bathrobe hanging in the bathroom, and went down to the spa. The Garrison Lodge did not have a ski facility; instead, it offered a faux hotsprings spa, to which many of the neighboring ski resorts sent their rattle-boned, tendon-challenged guests at the end of the day, which meant that this lodge enjoyed the bounty of the ski crowd without the hassle of maintaining, operating, and insuring a ski resort. She’d once asked if they sold stock in the place.
Her plan for the rest of the day was uncomplicated: go get a sandwich in the grotto bar next to the spa, enjoy a soak in the warm-spring pools, get a massage, have a nap, dinner, and maybe, if she felt like it, and only if she felt like it, put on some war paint and a little black dress, and go check out the lounge lizards. She’d reserve a snowmobile for tomorrow and get the kitchen staff to make her a bag lunch. Take that and her camera gear up to the higher elevations behind the town, 3,800 feet above sea level and almost a thousand feet above the town itself. Put the clinic mess out of sight and out of mind.
The Firefly Page 24